Immersion Syndrome
by DarkestWolfx
Summary: What if being too involved wasn't always for the best? What if in the end, you couldn't break away from it let alone know what's real? For the world becomes cold when if you stop fighting, but life becomes dull once you stop trying: once you let yourself sink too far.


I am so sorry for the about three month long disappearance. I never meant for it to tally up to so long as I took a brief break due to work and then other things add on…

Anyway, here is something to say I'm back – and staying back, if you can forgive me? I hope you enjoy anyhow.

This isn't set in any particular place, but I was basing it off the original, though you can read it based off the newer series if you like, I was simply using the older age ranges.

* * *

 _Blue_.

The blue of the sky above, the blue of the sea below, the blue of their eyes, the blue of their uniforms, the blue of Scott's sash...

 _Blue_. _That_ was _all_ he saw.

Blue – welcoming, tranquil and harmless – in comparison to black – dark, deep and offensive – was so much sweeter a sight. It was just as most preferred to see crevices of light to pitch murk. The dark, the starless night was fear-filled, oppressive and the morning sun which followed was security, reassurance that tomorrow did come, that it did follow yesterday.

Yesterday, today, tomorrow; those labels to the past which all blurred into one and combined as one mass of nothing when it came to remembering. In the long years to come when you remembered the date and the event, or nothing at all.

But how do you remember trauma that is thrown at you when you can't stomach it?

From small disasters to larger ones, from little moments to big ones, from small pebbles to boulders they were stuck and encased like sardines squished into a tin.

 _What_ do you deal with first? Rather, _who_?

Scott, because he's the eldest? Virgil, because he's inventive and may think of something? Gordon, because he's already suffered through one accident? One of them, because their father will expect it? No one, because he doesn't know _where_ to start or _what_ to do.

It was one of those moments when one needed to turn up and start rocking in the corner; when one needed to cry and hear someone tell them continually _'it will be alright'_ ; when one needed a hand upon their shoulder and arms around their back; when one needed the mind of another who – in such a position – could be calmer and surer of their choices; when one _needed_ to simply _be_ elsewhere.

Elsewhere, or nowhere. Nowhere, or somewhere. Here, there and everywhere, it just couldn't be done. Teleportation didn't exist, it was not something achievable in the current day, despite what else was. Teleportation of the body at least, for the mind was far superior and could take you almost anywhere if you had the imagination to sustain it.

He'd been many places.

He could go back to one of them.

He could get away from here.

No. He couldn't do that, he just _couldn't_. Once he left here, this time, this place, this situation, he wouldn't return to it. They'd all be forgotten, they'd all die, they'd all pass away from the knowledge of others. None would remember the great days of _'International Rescue have done it again!'_ and _'What a show by International Rescue!'_. No, they'd remember the day of _'International Rescue failed thousands._ ' or _'International Rescue: Disappeared, Destroyed or Dead?'_ or _'What became of the daring Boys in Blue?'_

They'd come down to pages of history people would turn from with a furrowed brow, un upturned lip, a raised eye, and a scowl full of scorn for the organisation that set them all up to believe in rescues for near anything. The organisation that set them up believing they could be relied upon, that they _never_ failed.

But now they had and it would all be his fault. _His_ , and his _alone_.

Alone: that's what he was. He was stuck solely placed in one of the worst situations imaginable. Alone, stuck and surrounded.

Surrounded by rocks like shards of ice, jutting and sticking out at a variety of odd angles, each one waiting to spear an innocent passer-by who strayed too close to the danger zone, each one a precarious piece of unbound nature.

Rocks crushing bones and blocking air.

Rocks which had brought down rolling streams of unfiltered dust and grit, which laced your hair like snow, stuck to your teeth like toffee and fudge, which floated into your eyes like air to your mouth. Which covered you in a film of dirt that was ever difficult to evade and even more difficult to rid yourself off. If you took off your stained clothes it was still on you. If you washed it from your body it still felt as though it was there.

It was like the presence of shadows you couldn't shake when you thought someone was following you down a dark lit street in the pitch black of night.

Or the ill feeling you couldn't shoulder when stuck in a near blackened hole, with all sources of air fading and all with life dwindling. With all who needed help screaming from around you, struggling and striving to be free from the mine before it trapped them too, before it wedged them in their doom and made it so just as easily as the hands on a clock tick by the hours.

But it all led back to the chunks of falling rock. To the thing which had beaten them, cut them off from the rest of the world, left them devoid of hope and sucked the components of life out of them.

The things, which after all he had faced, all natural or man-made disasters he had stopped, had finally beaten him.

Virgil had a rock pressing down upon his chest whilst Scott was stuck between a few misplaced rocks, squished like layers within a cake, and Gordon was buried beneath a collection of long, thin shards, the odd end skewing through fabric. The only movement came from around them, just as the only colour did. The starkest of all colours which little seemed to evade. His own craft certainly didn't - it was white washed in it.

There couldn't be point trying.

He _shuddered_.

They were all dead.

He _shivered_.

They _couldn't_ not be.

"No." It was little more than a breath. A word taken by the wind. A word with no air to it.

He tried not to think about it, endeavoured desperately to shut this from all knowledge, alas it be like a book you are two chapters away from finishing at a quarter to midnight, completely shattered, but perfectly wide awake and geared to go for broke and finish the tale before you settle upon the choice of sleep. One, that once you put down, you fall into a deep oblivion as though the tale had never mattered so much.

Yet this one's ending would disappoint.

It would be the wait you hung on for, only to find you may as well have let go before even turning the first page. It was the one you'd scoff at and throw to the jaws of the rubbish, because you couldn't comprehend how anyone could be offered the novel even at a discounted price in a charity shop.

It was one you merely forgot.

Pages and hours of someone's time and mind having been scribbled down, mulled over and edited into something readable, which time would cast out, disown and bury under the greater works of literature. One someone may find in years down the line, in the remains of a skeleton spine, birds having stolen the pages, caterpillars having chewed at the cover and weather having eroded for fodder the glue, but nothing having wanted the back slab which was too hard to carry, too thick to chew, and too solid to mangle. It was one of those tomes of history that need not have been penned.

It was how they would be come the end. Nothing but bones one may discover on an excavation, momentarily thinks to be something fantastic, only to be severely disappointed with the knowledge they are human bones.

Just _bones_.

His own felt weightless.

His own felt like heavy metal.

Truthfully, he was unsure. He was unsure what he could hold on to when there was little he could distinguish. He couldn't feel two opposites at the same time. Or at least, he was sure you couldn't. Hopeless and hopeful just didn't work in the same sentence, let alone emotion. If he could be sure of that, maybe he could get somewhere?

Nevertheless, maybe he couldn't. Maybe everything he was thinking was wrong? Maybe everything he knew was leaking from the very fabric of his mind and dripping from his body. Perhaps his body was going into shutdown and his mind was throwing out anything which had nothing to do with his survival. Perhaps he'd subconsciously given up, so his brain was letting go. Goodbye, Alan Tracy.

But like those things held onto by the mind, his was holding onto the _how_ , the _what,_ the _why_ and all the others taught to young children as the boring opening forms of questions. The tedious part, the exhausting part was the incomprehensible fact that he did not know the answers.

He did not know (or maybe remember?) how this had come to be, what had happened to bring them down here , or why they had come in the first place. It was like someone else had quill and ink in hand and was penning out his life as a story. It was almost ironic.

All the things John had written, all the things he had nosed at upon the elder's large chestnut book shelf, of all the self-done works, none of them mentioned International Rescue. None of them even mentioned him. There wasn't a single autobiographic word in any of them. No _'word from the author'_ or _'about the author'_.

They weren't going to be written in his name either, but the publishers thought it better.

John had grumbled, and said something along the lines of: _'it's hardly a necessity to use your own name. Just say it's by Thomas Davis.'_

Alan had chuckled - sniggered in Gordon's description, and received a very unruly look from the publishers in Scott's. Virgil didn't comment on either, for he'd been looking at the paintings around the office. He was surprised they didn't have better taste considering how much cover art work they did.

Jeff had shaken his head, said nothing and worn the hints of a smile as he returned to his paperwork.

It may have been the memory, or it could have been insanity's claws finally digging in, because he started laughing, a mouth wide open sort of laugh. A shrill sound, which the echo of the cavern seemed ecstatic to carry around and around upon the air, as though it was in fact a siren, one of those which shocked you when the vehicle behind you turned it on and proceeded to speed past.

One of those times of course, had been to pull Scott over for his bad driving. John had been dragged so far down as to keep mentioning exactly _who_ their father was. They'd still insisted on chaperoning the eldest Tracy's drive to the airport. _'Just to be safe,'_ Virgil had told him.

 _Safe_. Safety, safely, it was what they worked on. Save lives, _safely_. It was – as always – their father's chief warning every time they all went somewhere.

 _Why_ had that gone out the window?

 _Why_ had they ended up stuck underground like this?

He just _didn't_ know.

So he frowned in confusion, leaving his mouth open, gaping like a fish for good measure. People generally seem to do that when they're muddled.

Minds were funny old things now, weren't they? Well, he decided they must be, for, to start thinking of the parts comprised to making Thunderbird Three's engines work, was not exactly what one would expect to do in this situation.

He _should_ be doing something to save the lives of those he loved. He should be moving and fighting through adrenaline kicking shots of power to hold on to those last threads of life. Even if not for his sake he should keep going for that of his brothers, his fathers, his friends…

This was not what he should be expecting from this situation.

Going insane, losing his marbles, that was it. He'd finally cracked, been driven completely mad, around the bend not once, but the twice, maybe even thrice.

Or maybe he'd simply thought too much? Maybe he'd overworked his brain and blown a fuse. Oh well, Gordon could fix fuses. And if Gordon couldn't, Brains surely could. If Brains couldn't, well it still would only be half a problem. They had the money to find someone better who could. Unless (of course, considering the darker side of life and all pit holes of thought), he could not be fixed. Maybe that was the answer: they'd spent too long fixing others, they couldn't do it for themselves.

Couldn't keep fighting one they'd been knocked down.

He wondered about what had happened to his mind. He pondered the idea it was like that old TV set they found at Grandma's house, the one with all the grey lines running up and down in on repeat. No signal, no picture, just old, grey, fuzzy lines scrolling nonchalantly before their eyes.

He was beginning to see lines of his own. Dots, little spots drifting in and out of his vision at their will. He wished they'd go away.

Another part of him wanted them to stay.

Opening your mouth was always a silly idea. Dust had begun to filter into his throat – he could tell from the layer of a thin, almost grit like substance lacing his tongue and teeth.

You had to in the end though, in order to breath. Your body made you.

But this, this atmosphere was coming over his nose like a hand, ready to suffocate one by means of gripping until they fell limp.

 _Victory_.

His lungs were burning: _burning_ like the thick wick of a candle which cannot face the heat exposed to it, which unchecked is left to run amock or to wither like a Rose in mid-winter. Expansion for air seemed impossible.

 _This_ seemed impossible.

Sounds were distorting themselves, starting to morph into indistinguishable features. His ears had become like paper funnels, akin to the ones in Brains' lab. This was going beyond insanity. It _must_ be madness: he was hearing voices.

Things starting to fade in and out, like when blinking against the frontal force of salt-licked waves.

He couldn't see anything now. He guessed – not being a doctor to know for certain – that he was in the thralls of some form of panic attack. Where was John's calming voice when you needed it? Or Scott's clear instructions? Their father's insistence and reminder of their code? Virgil's creative ideas and Gordon's resolve? Where was anything when you wanted if you always found it when you didn't?

What was the point in holding on, when everything you did so for had already gone?

* * *

"Alan?" Firm, clad arms, cold though from the icy touch of the whips sent out by the deep, with a sense of security held in them that words couldn't cover. It took more time than it should to work out the name was his own, to realise that his ears did, in fact, work, and that the heavy spluttering was his own coughing.

"Alan?"

Motors had to turn in his brain before he was able to shake off the deep set paralysis which had taken him.

"Alan, can you hear me?"

Through his bleary, water-tipped eyes, three worried, yet relieved, brothers swam into view.

* * *

I hope you aren't too mad with me for the ploy featured there or the long break. I promise I am back and will update current stories soon as well as post the ones I promised to write for people (most of which are actually done) as well as a selection of new ones as I'm able to churn them out and of course episode based ones for the return of the new series.

So thank you very, very much for reading etc, I really do appreciate it.

A note regarding transcripts for those interested;

A collection of transcripts for the original series (1965) can be found here: * folder/uu5pl47ba5550/Thunderbirds_Transcripts

For the new series (2015), see this link: * folder/3qlww125ba7f9/Thunderbirds_Are_Go_(2015)_Transcripts

* You need to add www. mediafire in front of it.

Links are also on my tumblr (available from my profile). I'm currently re-adding all of them as I made some late modifications to the originals, so you may need to check back if the one you want isn't there. All of them are uploaded in Word document and PDF Format. If you would rather wait for the full collection of all the transcripts for each series in one document (including trivia and a timeline) then wait a few days for me to finish converting it. I will also be uploading some speech dictionaries for Parker and Brains as well as a rough (very rough!) translation of the Zombite language. If you want particular links sent to you over PM or email, or anything else transcribed, then message me.


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